Modern software systems are becoming more complex in many ways and are having to cope with a growing number of abnormal situations which, in turn, are increasingly complex to handle. Exception handling is an essential part of software and system architectures and a crucial element in the tool-set that enables the building of resilient, robust and safe software systems. Two ECOOP workshops on exception handling were held in 2003 and 2005. This book is primarily an outcome of these two events - several workshop participants as well as a number of other leading researchers in the field were invited to contribute a chapter each.

This book is composed of five parts; the first four deal with topics related to exception handling in the context of programming languages, concurrency and operating systems, pervasive computing systems, and requirements and specifications. The last part focuses on case studies, experimentation and qualitative comparisons. The 16 coherently written chapters by leading researchers competently address a wide range of issues in exception handling.